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notice the giant clusters of tiny berries as opposed to small long clusters of large berries

there seems to be a lot of confusion with the identification of poke vs. the identification of elderberry…i never imagined that they could be taken for each other but i can see how that could cause confusion so i want to clear this up right now! i’ve had several people contact me about in the past few days and i don’t want anyone else to confuse the two.

large clusters of very tiny, bb sized berries

elderberries are tiny. they grow in clusters instead of a long cylindrical cone if that makes sense…picture queen anne’s lace or yarrow with berries and that’s what elderberries looks like. pokeberries are about the size of peas with a dent in each berry. elderberries are about the size of a bb.

this is poke…notice the poke berries hang in a long thin cluster as opposed to elderberry’s umbrella-like clusters

also, the stems of elderberry are thin and woody with brown flecks on them. the only part of the elder bush that is red is the stems that the berries are on and some of the leaf stems. pokeberry plant stems are generally a purply red.

notice the bumpy fleck on the stems of elderberry. the stems are tree/bark like. pokeberry stems are fleshy, non-woody.

the leaves are different too. they look more like the leaves on a walnut tree, compound. the leaves on elderberry are opposite while the leaves on poke are simple and alternate.compound leaf (many ‘leaflets’ on a stem of a leaf) of elderberry

hard to see here (see below for a better picture) but stems of leaves are opposite on elderberry

stems of leaves are alternate on the pokeberry

as an aside, pokeberries are not as poisonous as people make them out to be…yes, if you ate a bunch of the berries and chewed the seeds in them really well, you would probably puke a lot and may have more serious side effects but they don’t taste very good and the taste alone would stop you. swallowing a few berries will do nothing more than put your body into high gear to clear out your system. as long as you don’t chew the seeds, it’s not going to do a whole lot to you other than maybe give you diarrhea. (but please, don’t try eating them nevertheless!)

having said that, poke is an excellent lymph mover. i’ve used it a lot in the past for swollen lymph nodes and for plugged ducts that cause mastitis. it is a low dose medicinal but a very valuable one!

poke on the left, elderberry on the right. notice elderberries leaves are opposite on the stem

poke makes a beautiful dye but sadly, it’s not color fast. it is fun to paint your hair with and washes out w/o staining. also, you can substitute it for ink in the elderberry ink recipe!! one final view side to side as they would hang on each plant. again, poke on the left, elderberry on the right

56 Responses to “Elderberry vs. Pokeberry”

This was super helpful to me! I’ve tried to look online at several different comparisons of elderberry and pokeberry without much success coming away with a true knowlegde. Thank you for this though. I am not confused any more!

Your site was very helpful to me. I have looked on and off for 3 months for a comparison as I have a lot of ‘Poke” berries on my property, I am looking for Elderberries and thought that is what I had. Glad I found your site. Thank You

I had a pokeberry growing in my herb garden and didn’t know what it was. I did dig it out last summer because I had a feeling that I didn’t want it there. After looking at these pictures it is obvious what it was!

Thank you for the wonderful pictures…I want to know more about herbs and find myself insecure with them. Now, you have confirmed that we do indeed have elderberries growing on our farm! NOW, I want to learn what I can do with them….thank you!

Thank you SO much! I moved into a house a couple years ago and left the purpleberried bushes that grew like weeds (and since this house was a nightmare with no landscaping I figured they probably WERE weeds! ). I chopped them back this year (left them at first thinking maybe birds liked them) and was wondering what to do this year. I was so worried I had ripped out and demolished food! haha, nope… POKE instead! this is the first site of the many I have searched to include a photos of BOTH and compare the clustering on each. THANK YOU!

I found your site by searching “plants that look like elderberry” because I am trying to figure out what kind of plant I have. I am hoping it is elderberry. I live in Southeast Texas and a bush has sprouted up in one of my flower containers recently. It looks like elderberry, but it is not a mature plant so I can not tell for sure. It is about 2-3 feet in heighth. You describe the elderberry as having bb size berries. Mine are a little larger… like twice the size of a bb. Also, the berries are in umbrella-like clusters; however, the clusters are small (like 6 or more berries). The leaves are a very odd clustering of leaves. The leaves on each cluster range in size from tiny (1/ inch) to larger leaves under 2 inches long. There is NO redness or purple on the stems. Now, I am thinking this is not elderberry, but I have no idea what it is. If you have any idea, please email me at littlethingstx@att.net . I do not want to cut this bush down if it is something good to have.

I am so glad that I found your site. I grew up on a farm. Both plants grew in our fields or on the roadsides. We were told to leave the berries alone on either plant because they were poison. My mother gathered the leaves from what she called the poke plant and cooked them. She parboiled them first, to remove the bitter taste which was probably oxalic acid. She drained the water and then cooked in fresh water, like spinach. We never got sick from eating this “poke salad” food.
It has been too many years since childhood and am now trying to identify the plants growing wild in the woods behind my house. Thank you for offering a great side-by-side description.

Awsome info, now when I have my daughter with me on my treck through the woods I’ll finally be able to tell the difference between the two and pass that knowledge down to my daughter. Thanks for the article, it was very helpful.

I have some wild shrubs in my back yard that are quite similar in description to the elderberry but the leaves are not serrated. They are quite smooth on the margin and remind me a bit of dogwood leaves. What kind of berry tree is this?

Well, would anyone like a giant Pokeberry bush? I have one by my back door and have to wrestle my way back into the house taking the dogs out. It is “robust”, to say the least, purple arms, and I think quite grotesque! I will have to take another picture of it. It is growing handsomely even in 100+F. weather of the last week, but I’m watering a lot because my flowers are also there. It is like Jack and the Beanstalk, covering my kitchen window now at a height of 12-15 feet! My dogs are not interested in it, and I supervise them outside. I feed the birds and provide birdbaths and water…haven’t seen any eating the berries yet, but maybe I’ll get a first-hand view from that kitchen window! Think I’ll dye my hair and become a Hippie! I thought it odd that a tulip right next to it never got anywhere. Probably not a good thing next to my foundation.

Thank you so very much for pointing out the differences between poke and elderberry. All my life I have mistaken poke for elderberry. That is because my mom and dad did not know the difference and they were born, raised, and spent the majority of their lives in the country. When I was a kid I remember mom fussing at me for getting my clothes stained by what she called elderberry but was actually poke. She also told me the berries were poison. Telling us kids something was poison was an excellent way of keeping us away from it.

I also looked at other sites and this site was fantastic at explaining and showing the differences between the two berries. I was raised in the country, but never paid much attention until I retired and had more time to start picking more berries to make jellies. A friend asked if we ever picked elderberries and I had no clue what they looked like. I knew there was some type of berry growing around where we picked raspberries and blackberries, but until I looked at your webpage had no clue that they were poke berries. Thank you for the excellent explanation and photos!

I have these growing in my front yard garden an wasn’t sure what they were, now I know. I think theyre very pretty an since there close to my front porch give some much needed privacy as I have a little cluster of them. They get pretty tall an I have pulled several of them out since I had to many. I guess the birds dropped the seeds there. Is really nice to know I don’t just have some weed in my yard but that it actually has a name!

Good Morning! oh my goodness! my husband told me that the tree in our yard was Elderberry,I was searching for recipes to make use of all the fruit on the tree, found the perfect recipe, but something kept bothering me. I gathered some fruit and a couple of leaves fell in my colander. I decided to google for pictures, and your site came up! It was not an Elderberry but a Pokeberry bush. Thank YOU! we would surely have been quite uncomfortable if not very ill knowing how much we dish up fruit crisp desserts!

How do pokberry seeds get transmitted? I never had them in my yard before this summer. Once I saw the plant/weed growing, and not knowing what it was, we chose to let it grow. Did it get here via the wind, or bird droppings? Just curious.

Wow..Finally figured out what this plant was thanks to your website. It’s been growing on the edge of my property by the woods every year for the past 20 plus years and always mildly wondered what it was and if I ate one of the berrys would I keel over from it. Finally sat down and came across your site and now I know…Poke Berry. Thanks!!

Thanks. My hubby (who is good with this stuff told me it was Pokeberry) so I wanted to see what the Elderberry looked like so I would know for myself in the future. It has been 30 years since I picked Elderberry as a child. I was planning to get rid of the Pokeberry but thanks to your fine information I will keep some of it around.

Thanks for this information. It took me a while to find a site that was really helpful. I guess I will be throwing out the batch of what I thought was elderberry syrup! Thanks for helping avert a puke fest at our house

As children, we would take the pokeberries and mash them, strain them, and then soak sunflower leaves in the juice overnight. We’d hang the leaves in the garden and the flies would flock to the leaves, drink the juice, and die right there. It was fascinating. As kids, we were busy and we took care of the bug population. Even now, I love to see a pokeberry!!!

Wonderful article! Thanks SO much! We have some pokeberry bushes growing on our property. The berries are just starting to form – they’re still green. I was hoping that they might be elderberry. You cleared that up, beautifully. Again, thanks!

Thank you for this article! I’ve been keeping my eye out for elderberries, and saw pokeberries today, and excitedly cut a few bunches down. Had to do a bit of extensive googling to double-check (while elderberries didn’t look exactly like what I’d picked, I wanted to believe…), and found your page.

Thank you for your very excellent lesson. After living here for over 7 years we have never had poke berry plants. I have a very tall one on the sunny side of our deck. Can it be trimmed, can it cause zkin sensitities and what would you recommend I do with it. It isnow about 8ft and growing o my deck. Thank you, Janet

Thanks for the very clear and informative article! When I was a kid, visiting Grandma and Grandpa on their farm in Indiana, I used the berries from a bush next to the house as filling for my mud pies. She about flipped out, said they were poisonous, but I always wondered about that and now I see she was right as they definitely were pokeberries not elderberries.

I now believe my large overhanging plant to be a pokeberry. I thought it was poison sumac as last summer when working by the log pile (where the pokeberry plant grew) I broke out in a terrible rash all over my face. Took a prescription of prednisone and a topical cream to get rid of it. Can the pokeberry bush also cause such a rash?